A Bookish Choice: Wanda, Wanda, Wanda!

A literary-minded witch gives you a choice: with a flick of the wand, you can become either an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades, or a popular paperback author whose books give pleasure to millions. Which do you choose?

Wanda the witch said to me,

as she looked up from “Wuthering Heights”,

“What would you choose to be, o aspiring novelist,

To be admired and studied after you are dead,

Or give pleasure to millions while you are alive?”

I thought and thought and thought again,

For it truly was a conundrum,

And then my eternally pragmatically straddling mind gave answer so:

“If I were well-off from my profession and I’d have the time and inclination, I’d write a tome that’d last for generations that would have others say ‘He lived before his time.’ (I wish!)

But if not so, I’d rather prefer to be a best-selling novelist and rake in the moolah for you only live once and so why not live it well? Academics be damned! I’d have ample time for it after! Why I might even be gifted a doctorate!”

“Depriving yourself of the joy of eating is a sin. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that you won’t know where to stop. You were born with the wisdom to self terminate the act of eating. You just have to rekindle it.” —Rujuta Diwekar.

“People get confused about talent. Talent isn’t striking the ball well, or very hard. Some play beautifully, some flawlessly, others run brilliantly. But in all sport the final objective is to win. So, in summary, the person who wins the most is the one with the most talent.”—Rafael Nadal.